Some of you are probably wondering what was going on in my life after my little interruption a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to take some time to process it before I shared more and while I am still processing it to a degree, I think I have a lot of the major stuff out of the way and am here to share a bit.

I ended up getting a surprise letter from my mother in the mail. Basically, it was a “Dear John” letter of nature. It was a letter ending our relationship. It wasn’t long, but the main points about it consisted of telling me that working on a relationship between us was too hard for her, stating that she would not ever know me or my child, that I was to “Take care,” and when she signed it, instead of it being signed by “Mom,” it was signed by her first name. So with all of that, it felt very final.

Now I’m not here to vent or rant about this whole story. I’m not here to dish out all the details of what led up to this. I have close friends where I can and do discuss this with. I don’t feel a need to trash my mother in any type of forum. What I would like to do is share stuff related to me, not her. Things that I think would be relevant and helpful to others.

This letter surprised me, as my last formal communication to my mother was to reach out to her about what kind of relationship I would love to have with her and an open invitation to work on that together. I laid out what I believed a healthy relationship to consist of, which, to me, is good communication, boundaries, getting to know each other better, accountability, lots of grace for each other, and working hard on our own selves at not taking offense easily. I told her how I believed that miscommunication and misunderstandings are some of the top things that kill relationships. I told her my heart towards her, which is totally for her 100%, and how great my desire was to get to know her better and for her to know me better. I also asked to know her response to my email, and that if anything that I wrote was troubling to her in any way, that I hoped we could discuss why, hear each other out, and work together to find some way to work through it that would be acceptable and safe for both of us.

For a year, I heard no response back. Then out of the blue, I get this response from her in the mail. And for me, that was ouch. It felt like she had died. It felt like I was being betrayed. Hopefully this is not a trigger for anyone, but at the most, it felt like I was being aborted, but not sight unseen, but after she had a chance to get to know me for 30+ years, and then saying, um, no. At the least, it felt like I was being dropped off at an orphanage. It stung. It hurt. And I felt like she was willingly giving up on me and a relationship together for no substantial reason.

Now stopping right there – can you relate to that in some way? We all are going to experience a betrayal in our lives. It may not be your mother, but it doesn’t matter who sometimes. Betrayal is betrayal. Being given up on is abandonment. Someone saying you’re not worth working things out for – it’s going to hurt, no matter who it is.

And when you experience that, what are you going to do? How do you pick up the pieces? Where do you go from there? Or do you not go on from there and instead let that halt you forever? What do you do?

I’m not here to judge anyone else in what they have gone through. I’m not even here to judge my mother. You know what I am concerned about? Me. And that might sound self-centered, if you just stopped listening right there, but I’m righteously concerned about me.

See, I can’t control what others do to me. Boundaries can help somewhat, but unless I become controlling and manipulative or become a hermit, I can’t control 100% what people do to me. If I am going to be in any relationships at all, if I open myself to the possibility of love, I am also opening up myself to the possibility of being hurt as well. To me, it is useless to focus on trying to control others 100% since that is impossible. It cannot be done. What I CAN do, however, is control me.

Some responses I will have to something like this happening are automatic. But some responses will not be. Some of those responses, and especially my choices of how to react and respond, I get to decide how that part of the story goes. So instead of wasting a lot of time about others, I take all my extra energy and focus and I look at me.

I can choose to become a victor or a victim at this point. I can choose to forgive or be bitter. I can choose to let my worth be affected permanently by this or to be affected permanently by something much more stable. All in all, where I go from here is totally up to me. And I take that responsibility very seriously.

As for me, I refuse to be a victim for the rest of my life. That’s not what I want my identity to be about when people look at my days on this side of eternity. This is not the only heartache I have experienced in my life. People have given up on experiencing much less. But I am wanting a certain story, if you will, with my life on this side of eternity. And I want a good story. And I don’t want my story to be that I gave up, that I compromised, that I stayed a victim, that I became bitter, that I let other people or circumstances be the excuse that stopped me from my overcoming, from my “Cinderella” story, if you will.

Now I can “say” this all I want. Actually walking this out is a whole different story. You know what I’m talking about. People who “say” they are “fine” when they clearly are not. I don’t want that either. I am willing to do whatever I have to do in order to forgive, to let go, to heal, and yes, ultimately, to bless those people who, whether intentionally or unintentionally, end up cursing my life and who hurt and attack me.

Do you see how I am saying that I am making this about me in a righteous way? This is not about what people have or have not done to me. This is about me and which path I am going to choose to be on. And you can say that I am making this too simple. You can claim that this is just pretty writing and that I am not really living this out. And for any who would say that, I’m sorry you feel that way. This is not about you either. This not about proving to anyone that I am doing well. This is about my journey, whether others see it rightly or not. There simply isn’t anything to prove to anyone. If you don’t believe it, if you are offended, or fill in the blank with something else entirely, I am sorry you feel that way. And I leave it at that.

I have a feeling this post may get a lot of responses. We all have toxic people in our lives. We all experience betrayal. We all need to learn more about boundaries. We all need to learn more about how to grow and develop our relationships. We all need to learn more about what to do about people who seem to create drama in our lives or who try to control and manipulate us and upset our peace. We all need to learn more about how to heal and to forgive, how to let go and honestly move forward. We all need to learn more about how to vent and process our feelings in a righteous way and not attack others with those feelings while doing that. These are desperately needed life skills that are seldom learned and seldom taught, and in the rare case they are taught, they usually are not taught relevantly and practically, and because of that, are not passed on from generation to generation.

What I have learned in this area has taken hard study and initiation and seeking out Wisdom from multiple areas and trying to put all the pieces together and then turning that into practical steps to walk out daily. But I LOVE this. I LOVE what going in this direction has been and continues to bring into my life. I LOVE who I am, and who I am becoming. I LOVE the direction I am going at in my life. I LOVE that I am ensuring that I will not end up on my death bed with a pile of regrets. I LOVE the peace and the joy that keeps increasing in my life through this. It has been worth every hard step I have taken. I am experiencing the reaping of benefits already. I am sad that previous generations did not pave the way better or make this easier to walk, but that just makes me more eager to help pave the way for the next generation, so it will be easier for them. I LOVE that in that sense, I am a pioneer for my generation and upcoming ones. What I do and live out every day is simple, and yet, we have forgotten the simple, the foundational things, the basic steps of common sense and truth in a lot of areas. I am loving my story as it is being created.

So please, send me your responses. Send me your questions. Send me the topics you would like written about and shared about this and relating topics. I do not claim to know everything. But I am happy to help others in this area and to do what I can to bless you and speed up your journey in this. Every time I post about toxic people, boundaries, etc., so many people chime in either through email, comments on the blog, or comments on my facebook page. So I know there are others out there who are hungry to learn more about this and how to incorporate this more practically in their life.

If I can forgive and overcome a betrayal like this, and I am just a regular person, then I believe, if you want it, so can you. It may not happen overnight, but it can surely happen. I am not simply saying, “Get over it.” That’s not practical, that doesn’t work. It’s a process to heal, to forgive, to let go. It’s not possible to just simply say, “Get over it.” But it IS possible to start and go through a process, that is usually very individual, and to be able to overcome what you have experienced. Many hugs to you all out there that have experienced betrayal, rejection, hurt, abuse, neglect, or just simply toxic people. The good news is they don’t have to take control of and run the rest of your life. You can take your life back and have the life you have always dreamed of. It just depends on how bad you want it. ❤

As I sat and thought about it, I realized that we did something different that morning. We had to run out the door quickly, and she didn’t get a part of her usual breakfast. One thing I do is we make homemade bone broth from scratch and I put ghee in it for her. I realized yesterday that she did not get that and that the very last time we were in a rush and she did not get ghee, we had the same thing happen, where she got very short tempered for no reason.

So I promptly went over and got a spoonful of ghee and gave it to her. Almost instantly she calmed down and became her normal usual self again. It was quite amazing.

You may be saying, wow, what a nice story this is. But what in the world is ghee? Ghee is simply clarified butter. It’s real butter that has been heated and they skim off the watery layer as well as all the milk solids that separate from it. What is left is ghee. What makes ghee nice is that because the milk solids are separated, even people who have lactose intolerance usually have no issues with ghee.

Ghee is extremely rich in antioxidants. It doesn’t need refrigeration, which is nice. It has an incredible flavor. Ghee can usually be found in your health food store, sometimes from a farmer’s market, and you can always make your own. It’s really easy.

Ghee is known for a lot of health benefits. According to the Bhavaprakasha 6.18.1, an ancient 16th Century Ayurvedic text, “Ghee is sweet in taste and cooling in energy, rejuvenating, good for the eyes and vision, kindles digestion, bestows luster and beauty, enhances memory and stamina, increases intellect, promotes longevity, is an aphrodisiac and protects the body from various diseases.”

Ghee is known to reduce inflammation, benefit nerve tissue, the brain, memory function, eye issues, is touted to help in detoxing the body, lubricate the joints, and even help with weight loss. The rich fat it offers makes it ideal to eat during pregnancy and as an early food for young children where the brain is still highly in development.

Now, I already knew all of that. But it still does not explain why it benefits my daughter’s temperament so much. But I can tell you one thing, she’ll be getting that ghee everyday from now on, no matter what. I can see the pattern of the difference it makes when she takes it as well as when she doesn’t. I did not know about the health benefits of ghee during my pregnancy, but you can be sure that next time, I’ll be making it a huge staple as soon as I get that positive test. ❤

So there I was in late 2006, having come from a size 0 to where now a size 18 wouldn’t even fit, I have fired all of my doctors because I have had it with them, for this is where they led me to, and I felt near death. And that’s not an exaggeration. I felt near death.

Some days, I would take a breath and say thanks to God. Then take another painful breath and say thanks again. And that was my great accomplishment for the day. Breathing and being grateful for each one I was able to take, even in the midst of suffering. You can say, oh wow, that’s pretty awesome to be able to do that. Actually, it was a survival mechanism. I felt I could either choose to be grateful and lean on God, OR, I could give in to the massive depression and just spiral downward, possibly never to return. As hard as it all was, I just could not let this set of circumstances become my permanent story. I could not finish this side of eternity and be okay with giving up and settling for this place. I just couldn’t.

On the days breathing wasn’t such a chore, and I could at least sit up in a recliner, I would pull out my laptop and just started researching my symptoms and all I could find about weight loss. I was in a unique situation where I had a weight issue that wasn’t caused by wrong portion control, lack of proper exercise, or years of wrongful eating. In addition, I felt ashamed to have all that weight on. That shame was the least of my current problems, but it was there. I just felt like I wasn’t me anymore, that I was in a disguise, and completely unable to be who I really was. It surprised me to realize how physically expressive I was as a person, and not being able to do things, like dance, was just heartbreaking. Not to mention that I had difficulty doing much simpler things and was house-bound for the most part.

So I started at the beginning. I changed my diet. I got better nutrition. I tried all different types of portion sizes. I counted calories. I tried the “Atkins diet” where it is no carbs and high fat. I tried low fat. I tried no fat. I tried being a vegetarian. I tried juicing. I tried eating styles of different kinds from all over the world. I tried eating a very limited diet. I tried eating a varied diet. I tried the “Rice diet.” I switched to all organic foods. I eliminated all processed foods. I eliminated all sugar and all artificial sugar substitutes. I eliminated all kinds of sodas, both regular and diet.

I tried exercising out the WAZOO. I tried multiple kinds of exercise. I tried walking. I tried jogging/running. I tried weights. I tried joining different gyms. I tried home gyms. I tried traditional calisthenics. I tried yoga. I tried Pilates. I tried what little dance I could do. I tried “Zumba.” I tried swimming. I tried water aerobics. I tried breathing exercises. I tried workout DVD’s of all kinds. I tried every exercise/weight loss infomercial I could find. Whatever I could find, I tried.

I even did extreme types of fasting, detoxing, and cleanses. I did colon cleanses. I did candida cleanses. I did the “Master Cleanse.” I tried juice fasting. I tried the “Daniel fast.” I did several kinds of detoxing shakes. I checked and fixed my body’s pH level and brought it out of a very acidic state. I even did pure water fasting for several weeks in a row. (Yes, really. I have witnesses.)

I tried all the special diet teas, like “Wu-long.” Tried all the diet pills. Tried all the diet herbs. Even some kind of diet weight loss patch. I restored my adrenals and thyroid. I tried healing my hormones. I tried increasing my metabolism. I tried dealing with cortisol issues. I started on flower remedies. I dd counseling. I went through programs to heal my emotions. I did forgiveness and healing of past issues. I gave a ton of stuff away. I let go of everything I could think of, went down every known avenue possible. I was healing myself in every way I could think of: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

You want to know where all this got me? NOWHERE. Here I was, thinking that I could discipline myself out of this, that if I was just persistent enough, strict enough, dedicated enough, that, although it might take some serious discipline and time, that I could just “buck up” and slowly, but albeit SURELY, get this weight down.

While that works in some situations, as you can see if you watch shows like the “Biggest Loser,” I honestly learned the hard way that it was possible to, not only be in a situation where the weight problem was not caused by you, but also that it was entirely possible that you could have a weight problem that could NOT be corrected through diet, exercise, detoxing, fixing the hormones, body pH, and mere dedication and discipline alone.

Let me say this: Most cases of overweight issues ARE caused by bad diet, poor exercise, high rate of toxicity, hormones and body pH that are off, and can be fixed by adjusting these things. But that was not to be my story.

At this point, I was devastated. Again, I was faced with the choice to accept my fate and to give up. You have no idea how many people told me at this point how I didn’t look bad, that I didn’t need to lose weight, that this was just a part of getting older, that I should stop fighting and accept it, and that it really wasn’t that bad of a situation, and even saying how great I did look, and that I should be happy with this current reality. Now, I know a lot of them meant good. I know a lot of those who said that honestly cared about me. I also know that there was no worse thing they could have said to me.

Even though they meant well, all they were saying to me was to compromise. And if you know me, there is no worse thing than unrighteous compromise. I felt near death. That was NOT okay. I could not accept this new reality as permanent. I could not say that person in the mirror was me. I was literally a prisoner in my body. A slave to whatever it was that had happened. There was NO WAY I was going to stay a prisoner or a slave. I absolutely was resolved that I was not coming into agreement and making peace with these circumstances. This is when I changed from being sad about what had happened to being angry. Today, I thank these people who suggested compromise, cause it fired a new passion within me that I would never settle for this being my reality for the rest of my days.

So what do you do when the mainsteam paths do not work? What do you do when counting calories fails? Conventional wisdom said that if I did these things, if I worked hard enough, was disciplined enough, that the weight would come off. Um, it didn’t. ………. awkward pause ………. Where to now? ………. ??!!??!!??

All I knew at the time was that something strange was going on. There was apparently a lot I did not know. This was a deep mystery, and I needed to find out what it was all about. The only thing I DID know was that I absolutely, positively, was NOT going to compromise OR give up. ❤

I’m a weird mix of being extremely social and extremely private. I definitely need both and I absolutely love to be very open and real to those I have a chance to get to know and can see in person. I have some marvel at how very honest and real I can be under those circumstances – where really no question or topic is too personal for me. On the internet, facebook, or any area/circumstance where I have less control over who sees what and when, I am much more highly selective about what I share and fight the tendency to be anxious over what goes public. All this to say that telling even part of my personal story here is a big deal for me. I know the more I open up and make myself vulnerable in a righteous way, the easier it will get. And that is a much bigger part of my personality, a habit I have created of facing my fears. ❤

My HCG story begins about 9 years before I ever took a drop of the HCG itself. I became disabled in late 2001, just days after the towers fell. I went from being a young agile dancer to a situation where I suddenly couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk, could no longer work, I couldn’t take care of myself, my entire life just flipped upside down at the mere age of 23 years old. Not knowing any better, I went the conventional medical route of things. I trusted the doctors and the traditional medical community that they knew what they were doing. Several years later, I ended up with a literal suitcase of medications that I took daily, and a whole bunch more physical conditions than when I started. I was also severely underweight due to the side effects of some of the meds I was on. To give you a picture of that, I was 5’7″, only 93 pounds, and size 0 was a bit big. I looked like a cancer patient. You could see my ribs. I had so little fat on me that I had to bring a pillow with me to sit on everywhere I went because of the pain sitting down in most places with no natural cushioning.

In 2006, I went to the emergency room and was given a large dose of IV steroids. The amount that I had consented to was not followed, as I personally felt cautious about large doses of steroids. They assured me it was only going to be a certain amount. I found out later it was hundreds of times above that.

In the next four to six weeks that followed, I went from a size 0 to not being able to fit in a size 18. I got stretch marks. The weight was not even over my whole body. My abdomen was one size, my hips another, my thighs another, and not even close together in sizes. My face ballooned up too. I had no idea what was going on. It felt like it literally happened overnight. I suddenly could not go anywhere much. For one thing, I could not find any clothes that fit besides guy sweatpants. You can’t go too many places in male sweatpants. Size 18 would not fit at all and if I went up to the plus sizes, they would literally fall off to the ground. In addition, I am very tiny boned and also have fibromyalgia. The extra weight appearing all of a sudden was excruciating. Everything hurt. I would climb stairs like an old person, not sure if I could get all the way up, you know, like FIVE of them. I had to use wheelchairs and those motorized carts if I dared to venture out of the house. It was a nightmare.

I had never had a weight issue before. I didn’t know what to do. But it was at this point in my life that I fired my medical doctors, every last one of them. It was more than just a bad situation. The pain, being home-bound, the depression, and feeling powerless to change any of it – it was one of the darkest times of my life. I seriously for first time saw how bad extra weight could be.

Not knowing what it was like to be overweight, I had always assumed that the hardest part was looking in the mirror and self-image. Boy, was I wrong. Not that the self-image part isn’t hard, it IS. But now when I see someone overweight, I see the physical pain they are in. It was greater than I could have ever imagined. In fact, if I hadn’t gone through it myself, I would have thought people were greatly over-exaggerating, using it as an excuse to be lazy, and just out to get sympathy.

Most people get overweight gradually, over a period of time, usually years. Since mine happened virtually overnight, I got to see the comparison in a whole new way. I got to see how debilitating and painful it was. How much of my daily life and movement I lost. How even tiny things like sitting/laying down, bathing, brushing your teeth, even taking a breath, how all of that was so much more difficult and PAINFUL. I had no idea at this point that being able to see this was going to be a gift.

Most people gain weight over such a long period of time, they are unaware of what they have lost. They look in the mirror each day and don’t really notice the change they are undergoing. The pain and interference of what they can do in their daily lives is so gradual and minute, it slowly becomes accepted and slips by nearly unnoticed. To sum it up, it becomes a new normal for them. Because my weight came on so quickly, I was able to see exactly what I had lost. My life became a plethora of darkness and immense suffering. I did not recognize this person in the mirror before me. My physical body was groaning and sizzling with pain in every pore and every joint from the sheer extra weight. My emotional self was in absolute shock and frozen in trauma. I felt like I was suffocating in every conceivable way possible. Every breath, every step, every second was a strained effort, birthed in agony, and swaddled in a heavy blanket of despair.

At this point, I had no idea what had happened, I did not know what I needed to do to fix it, and I was so overwhelmed physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, that I honestly did not know how I was going to make it through each day. All I knew was that I had two choices. One, I could accept this and give up. Or two, I could FIGHT.

I didn’t know where I was going to get the strength to fight, especially when I did not have the strength to even cry. Very simply, there was absolutely no way that I was accepting this new image in the mirror. I was never EVER going to make my peace with this new level of pain, with this new lack of physical ability, no way I was ever going to say that stranger in the mirror was me. All I knew was that somehow, some way, if it took years or decades, I was going to get this figured out, God help me. ❤

This is the first post in a series about the HCG diet. I get a lot of questions about what the HCG diet is, as it has been a wonderful companion to me on my journey of health and weight loss. The HCG diet is definitely controversial, but then, so are things like breastfeeding and eating healthy. Being controversial doesn’t really mean anything these days. 🙂

First of all, I am not a doctor, this is not health advice, I am not advising anyone that this is the right thing for them. This is about me and what my journey has been like. Period. Always get informed, make your own decisions. It’s your life, own it.

The HCG diet is a unique way to lose weight. It was originally developed by Dr. A. T. W. Simeons over 50 years ago and was actually discovered completely by accident. In other words, he wasn’t trying to find a way to lose weight to then make money off of it. That makes me feel better, lol.

HCG is actually a hormone that is created by the placenta during pregnancy. What Dr. Simeons discovered is that the HCG hormone has a special ability to take stored and reserved fat in the body and turn it into usable calories to fuel the body, all the while at the same time protecting lean muscle in the body. In order to trigger this process into happening, one must eat a specific and low calorie diet.

One of the common misconceptions about the HCG diet is that what is really making you lose weight is just the low calorie diet. When people say this, I honestly laugh. Have you ever tried to do that before? Cause I have. I have done extended fasting. If you do low calorie diets alone, without the HCG, you don’t lose weight very fast at all. The body enters into “starvation mode” and tries to hold onto all the fat it can, since it does not know how long the low calorie diet will be. (The body is super smart.) During low calorie diets alone, you also tend to lose lean muscle quickly, you get tired, cranky, your cravings for food go up, you’re extremely hungry, and all in all, you’re just not doing too well. Any weight you lose, it is definitely NOT coming from your reserve fat stores, and you’re probably going to put back on real fast. Low calorie diets alone are just not effective for losing mass amounts of weight, much less the right kind of weight loss, where it comes from reserved stores of fat on your body.

On the other hand, when you add HCG to a specific low calorie diet, your lean muscle is protected, you’re not hungry, you’re not cranky, you’re not tired, you lose weight, and you’re not starving yourself. How can this be? Because the HCG is there to trigger your body into releasing a flood of calories from your reserved fat cells, so you’re actually getting a lot more calories than what you are eating. I’ve read statistics that show that your body can pull up around 2000 calories out of your fat daily while on the HCG diet and release them to you for fuel. So say you’re eating a low calorie diet of 500 calories a day on the HCG diet. With the fat being released, to your body, depending on what actually does end up getting released, it’s more like you’re eating 2500 calories instead. Once you get past the first couple of days and the body really has flipped the switch into getting calories from your fat, it personally was pretty easy for me from there. In fact, many days, I was so not hungry, that I would have to force myself to eat what my low calorie diet was. Yes, really. Not joking there.

So how fast can you expect to lose weight? Well, everyone is different. But the average is around a pound a day. Yes, really. I just said a pound a day. You’re going to have to reprogram your mind to look at this differently than any other way you may have lost weight before. I know the old programming says that if you lose weight too fast, that’s bad, and you won’t keep it off. In some ways, that is true and some ways that isn’t.

Everyone puts on weight for different reasons. For me, my issue was not a portion control issue, eating the wrong foods issue, nor was it an exercise issue. In fact, my weight issue was not my fault. Yes, really. I’m one of the few who can actually say that. (I’ll get more into my story on a later post, but it was caused by a doctor/hospital error.) But of those people that I have interviewed, they said this really corrected not only their weight problem, but also helped them cure their problems with portion control, choosing/craving the wrong foods, as well as not wanting to exercise like they should. When the HCG diet helps to correct the root problem of why you’ve had weight issues, then it doesn’t matter if you lose a pound a day. By correcting the root issue of your weight problem, you’ve highly increased your chances of the weight staying off and not coming back. If you think that you can do the HCG diet and not really correct the issue that is causing your weight problems, if you think you can lose the weight and go back to eating whatever junk you want while you spend all your time in front of the computer, then you’re wrong. It will all come back. On the other hand, in order to keep it off, you don’t have to keep taking the HCG for the rest of your life, you don’t have to eat perfectly or low calorie afterwards, and you don’t have to exercise all day like a hamster on a wheel. You just have to be reasonable and have some balance. 🙂

This is just a quick overview of what the HCG diet is and a little bit on how it works. Please stay tuned for more posts, as we get a more in-depth look at this diet and answer more of your questions. If you have a specific question about the HCG diet, please email that to me: BlackSheepPrincess@gmail.com. Or you can post it to my facebook wall. You may just see the answer to your question in an upcoming post! Likewise, if you have had success in this diet and would like to be interviewed and share your story, contact me and you may be featured in an upcoming post. If there are other topics you want to hear about, please let me know that as well. I want to write about stuff that is relevant to you and your journey. I can do that better if you send me some feedback and let me know what you want to see here on the BSP. ❤

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